Drove to the farm in Ontario with younger son and dog yesterday, in time for an evening walk around the place. Fields of melons, tomatoes and corn. A coyote den. I don’t know if you can tell from the pictures but everything is very dry, soil like white powder, the unirrigated crops looking decimated with patches of withered or non-existent plants. Even the weeds are drying up. We have irrigation so the issue is not so pressing.

Sowesto indeed, but I didn’t exactly grow up “in the country.” Our suburb was literally at the very edge of London and I could see horses from the end of our street. The hinterlands between burb and farm…the abandoned pastures, future quarries … were more or less my playground. As soon as I could drive I explored further and there were, of course, the infamous country lads and bush parties to lure one out.

Beautiful photos Doug! My father used to take my siblings and I out to farms like this in Ohio to pick collards, beans, etc. in copious amounts. These pictures remind me of the “romantic dreams in my head” that I cultivated while doing such manual labor. Who would have thought that writers as well as crops can grow in these fields?

I looked at your photos with envy, Doug. We could use some of that dryness here. Our farm, half an hour west of Saskatoon, is mostly under water. Where cattle used to graze, water fowl of all types now nest and feed. Very pretty – but getting in and out is a chore. The mud on our road is too deep even for our Jeep. An ATV through a neighbour’s canola field is the only access point – sort of like the land bridge to Siberia. – Dave

indeed…would submit that “the farm” experience is most literary and literate (although with the dryness, maybe short of fully luscious)…with your words and images, could immediately locate the touch the feel the smell,the taste and the walk of the all of it.

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